WHICH IS WHY THE TRUMPISTS REBEL AGAINST THE LOCKDOWN:

But "while we may not have developed a collective 'lockdown personality,'" writes the BBC's Christian Jarrett, "we might have been changed idiosyncratically, dependent on our specific circumstances." For those lucky enough to avoid a traumatic lockdown experience, evidence suggests the disruption might actually bring about positive changes. 

"The lockdown might have turbo-charged a phenomenon known as 'The Michelangelo Effect,' which refers to the way we are more likely to develop into the kind of person we want to be if we're with a close romantic partner who supports and encourages us to behave in line with our aspirations - akin to a sculptor helping to reveal our ideal self," writes Jarrett. 

Like an encouraging partner, the enforced slowness and proximity to mortality of the lockdown may have acted as a sculptor, forcing us to look closely at our lives and chip away at all the ways reality fails to line up with our values and aspirations. 

For Hoffer's hero is 'the autonomous man,' the content man at peace with himself, engaged in the present.  In Hoffer's book, this hero, nourished by free societies, is set off against 'the true believer,' who begins as a frustrated man driven by guilt, failure and self-disgust to bury his own identity in a cause oriented to some future goal.

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